Monday News part 3

With the newly released Springdale (865PE) and Canterwood (875P) motherboards and 800FSB P4's, intel has taken a huge leap in both stock speed and overclockability. Will this crush the competition - the very affordable nForce2 + Barton combo - or are PAT, Hyperthreading, integrated S-ATA, and Gigabit lan just buzz words?

Whenever my good friend Nobes comes down to visit me - it usually means a couple of things - a spin in his nice new Nissan 350Z (should we review this car??), some golf with his buddies and some Command and Conquer Generals action. This time around, I had the fortunate opportunity to also check out his new Centrino based Gateway 450 X Notebook. I had just purchased a Thinkpad T40 notebook (a review will be up too) from IBM and was definitely interested in comparing the two notebooks. I had considered the Gateway model myself when choosing a Centrino based system but I opted for the IBM solution only because I was familiar with the Thinkpad series. With Nobes in town, this was my first opportunity to evaluate this notebook hands on and check out how cool a 15 inch screen would be on a notebook of this size.

The have been several questions swirling around as a result of the wording of the press release(s). It appears that Intel is not licensing VIA to make a processor based on any P4 socket design, however they are agreeing not to take any action for a period of 5? years. Is VIA pursuing a P4 socket processor?

We will continue to promote out C3 and Eden processors for now, and are planning to migrate to a more advanced bus structure of our own as mentioned in the press release. Unfortunately, I don't have any more details on what this will be except to say that our processors will continue to be fully x86 compatible. That is the key point. The market is very different than it was even a year ago. The focus has moved from single components to complete platforms, such as VIA Eden

Even without the EL lighting, this slim keyboard is a dream to type on. How does it function as a lighted keyboard though? You'll need to read to find out

With this particular set of numbers we chose the highest resolution possible to better illustrate how the high end cards distance themselves from now older cards as you add AntiAliasing and Anisotropic Filtering. The Ti4600 and even the FX 5600 do not relate with suitable framerates for play at these resolutions once AA and AF are enabled. The 9500PRO on the other hand will have the bare minimal framerates for relatively useable play. In fact, if you load up a game of Unreal Tournament 2003 with these settings at 1600x1200 you will find your framerates can range from a low of 5 to a high exceeding 30, depending on map and location. The FX 5900 has a significant lead here over the 9700 once everything is turned on - nearly 26%.

One problem I’ve noticed with stealth drives is finding something to use to get the button to work. I’ve tried stacking foam tape, taping small object to the button, and even gluing case screws to it. I finally decided I’d try something else. This guide will show you how to make an externally mounted button for your stealth drive. It will also show you a great mounting idea if you have a Lian Li case. After doing my stealth drive and external button, I came up with an idea that would make my Lian Li PC70. I was looking at my external 3.5” bays, and I thought to myself, “What can I do with all that space?” It instantly hit me - mount the button! “But how?” I thought. “A gaudy button would ruin the look of my front panel. When I LAN, the button could also break off.” I decided right there I’d find a way to turn my 3.5” bay covers into buttons.

We have looked at a lot of PC cases, mostly from Antec and Lian-Li, and when Chieftec approached me to take a look at there Matrix series of cases I was overjoyed. Chieftec have been around for quite some time now producing a lot of the cases you see for sale in the stores right now. They are most famous for the Dragon series of cases which quickly became the most popular case amongst modders and over overclockers due to its spacious interior and superior cooling power. Today we take a look at the Matrix series of cases, in particular, the MTX-C Midi Tower with clear side panel. Neo and Trinity would be proud.